Aug 1, 2011

Newsnm note - We ran across this well written feature by Sandra B. Martinez - Santa Fe New Mexican - Susana Martinez has been scaling walls since she was a kid. At 11 and of a mind to ignore her mother's warning, she couldn't stop herself from trying to conquer the garden wall bordering her family's three-bedroom, 1,400-square-foot Thomas Manor brick home in El Paso. "Don't run on that wall, Susana," her mother, Paula Aguirre, would tell her. "You're going to fall." Little Susana would climb the cinder-block wall anyway and start racing with a friend along the narrow, rounded top of the wall. "I fell and cut my thigh," Martinez said. "I didn't cry. I just remember thinking, 'Oh no!' I was more afraid of my mom."

Martinez with husband Chuck Franco

Martinez's father, Jacobo Martinez, was a boxer, so her mother had experience caring for wounds. When Aguirre poured peroxide onto her wound, Susana clenched her teeth. The peroxide foam gurgling from the bloody gash caused her to throw up the cherry Icee in her tummy. But she did not cry. Read full feature here: News New Mexico